There’s also some interesting history behind this unique shooting iron.

The Original LeMat

Part of the reason the LeMat may have caught on well with the Confederacy may be because it was designed by a Southerner. Jean Alexandre LeMat lived in New Orleans and designed the grapeshot revolver in 1856; his manufacturing efforts were underwritten by P.G.T. Beauregard, who became a general in the Confederate army. But, in one of history’s little ironies, the first guns were made in Philadelphia, in the plant of gunsmith and manufacturer John Krider. Interestingly, Krider is best known as an ornithologist; a pale color phase of the Red-tailed Hawk bears his name, the "Krider's Red-tail."

This was in a time, mind you, when the design of revolvers was not nearly as settled as it is today; a lot of alternatives had been floating around, some for decades.

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The first 250 guns were made in Krider’s facility; some were made in Liege, Belgium, and others in Paris, France. Those guns were proofmarked, though, with British proofmarks, having been transshipped through Birmingham on their way back to the New World. About 1,500 guns had already been imported when the Civil War broke out, with (accounts vary as to the exact numbers) 900 ending up in the hands of the Confederate Army, normally serving as officers’ sidearms, while 600 went to the Southron Navy. After the war began, LeMat received a contract for 5,000 more revolvers, but as he lacked the capacity to produce them, they were made in Europe. Confederate blockade runners tried to slip them in, along with other goods, through “Scott’s Anaconda,” but efforts were not entirely successful.

The LeMat is a heavy, bulky piece, with nine .42 or .35 caliber chambers around a 16 or 20-gauge shot barrel. It was a front-loading cap-and-ball affair, as were most martial firearms of the 1850s, with the revolver cylinders loading with the help of a rather awkward, fragile-looking but apparently functional loading lever on the left side of the gun’s frame. It weighed four pounds loaded, which is pretty heavy for a sidearm, and it was also over a foot in length. That wouldn’t matter so much to a cavalryman who likely carried the gun in a saddle holster, but it would be a substantial addition to a foot soldier’s kit. And that wasn’t the worst of it; the .42 and .35 caliber bore sizes were non-standard, requiring the poor Southron troops to carry around lead and a bullet mold. Historical accounts presented the logistical difficulties very plainly.

As the war went on, the perils of the stormy North Atlantic, combined with the risks of running the Union naval blockade, made delivering the guns increasingly costly and unreliable. Of the 2,900 Grapeshot Revolvers LeMat produced, historians estimate that somewhere from 900 to 1,700 actually made it to the Confederacy.

Firsthand accounts from LeMat pistol users are extremely difficult to find today. We do know that the proprietary calibers of the early model (or first series) LeMats were a common source of complaints from soldiers. Army supply chains, North and South, typically delivered .36- and .44-caliber pistol ammunition. That meant shooters armed with LeMats, which were initially chambered in .35 and .42 calibers, had to cast their own projectiles.

In theory, the LeMat was an impressive idea. In practice, it didn’t work out so well. Every war is won and lost by logistics, and the LeMat was an added headache to the Confederacy’s already lean supply chain. Its innovative design didn’t make up for the problems. But several prominent Confederate officers saw its appeal, including General Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson, the cavalryman General J.E.B. Stuart, and General Beauregard himself. Generals, we should note, probably didn’t have to sit around a fire at night casting their own projectiles.

After the war, two cartridge-firing LeMats were made: one a pinfire, another a centerfire version. There were even LeMat long guns, although apparently very few of those were made. The pinfire guns are the rarest variation, while the centerfire guns, using the French 12mm Perrin or the 11mm Chamelot-Delvigne cartridges over a 24 gauge shot barrel, are somewhat better known but not exactly common.

The rifle – it’s unclear how many were made, but serial numbers apparently go up to 200, making it a rare piece indeed. There has, though, sprung up something of a cottage industry in taking replica LeMat revolvers and rebuilding them as carbines, to what purpose, I’m not aware. I’ve always been skeptical about the idea of a revolving long gun. It seems like one is inviting some nasty burns to the non-firing arm from the cylinder gap.

If you want to see how this could work, try gently wrapping a piece of paper around a revolver at the front of the cylinder, then popping off a shot.

As It Stands Today

Want a new LeMat? You may be able to find one. A modern manufactured version of the original cap-and-ball LeMat is available from Pietta of Italy in several versions: Navy, Cavalry, Army, and Old West. All use .36 caliber balls, have a 20 gauge barrel, and appear otherwise to be made very close to the original pattern; the four versions appear to differ only in cosmetics. Pietta has a good reputation, and while the replicas are pricey – over four figures – they may be an interesting experiment for the black-powder shooter grown bored with the more traditional pieces.

The LeMat was an interesting experiment – a combination gun with a twist. Such a thing wouldn’t lend itself well to modernization, as evidenced by the failure of the centerfire LeMats, and modern guns can do more with less bulk and mass in any case. But it’s a look back at a time when firearms innovation was running a little wild, and it was a piece that had the potential to give a hard-pressed cavalryman one last-ditch effort to shoot his way out of a bad situation. That, and its rather convoluted history, makes it worth noting.